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Enthusiasm shines through professional reserve when Trent Yanko explains the subterranean rocket science he uses to reopen the Turner Valley black gold reservoir. Deep and horizontal barely begin to describe his designer wells. To visualize the underground trails blazed by modern drilling, first look at that office supply store, says the engineer, pointing down from his president’s suite at Legacy Oil and Gas Inc. Then imagine a sculpture in steel pipe that starts at the store’s parking lot and soars over seven blocks of downtown Calgary to his 44th-floor picture window.

This spring, two high-level Calgary police officials and a City of Calgary bylaw employee flew to Stockholm for a closer look at the Nordic model of prostitution and whether it could work on Canadian streets.

Skiing all day in the snow-covered Norwegian countryside was exhilarating, but exhausting, too. It was our third day in a row tackling the vast network of groomed tracks around Sjusjoen, going wherever our whims took us and rarely ending up on the same trail twice.

There’s no image yet of what Calgary’s new central library will look like, but city agencies promised a new landmark crafted by the designers of the modern, angular face of the world’s most storied library. Snohetta, of Norway, designed the airy internal amphitheatre and elegant sloped roof of the library in Alexandria, Egypt, and have crafted similar signatures for the Oslo opera house and 9/11 memorial in New York.

Oslo recently overtook Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world. That doesn't surprise me in the least. The last time I was in Oslo, a plain cup of coffee cost $4. Beer, while very good, was $8 a glass.

CALGARY — A Global Cities report ranks Calgary ninth in the world for economic prosperity and development with Ottawa-Gatineau getting the top rating. The Martin Prosperity Institute, with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, a think-tank investigating the role of place in economic prosperity, measured how cities throughout the world are performing based on the three T’s of economic development — technology, talent and tolerance — along with a fourth measurement, the quality of place.

A woman named Mona Elisabeth Brother was visiting the National Gallery recently, and she stopped in front of the Edvard Munch painting Clothes on a Line in Asgardstrand. The oil on canvas — the only Munch painting on public exhibition in Canada — shows a woman hanging clothes, standing alone among some houses with the Oslofjord in the background.

Banff’s Paul Stutz and Whistler, B.C.’s Mike Janyk secured spots on the World Cup after wrapping up first and second positions, respectively, in the overall Nor-Am slalom standings after Sunday’s finale at Canada Olympic Park.